In The Yielding

December 5. 2013

Although I practice daily, 

I suck at yielding to the present moment.

Either hanging in the past:

why did I do that?

why didn't I do that?

what the hell was I thinking?

did I really sleep with that guy back in 1975?

The list of questions and replays are long and looping. 

It's a pointless practice, to say the least.

Then there's my foolish attempts to control the future: 

thinking thinking figuring figuring

if I do this, then that will happen.

if this happens, then I'll be _____________ 

(safe, happy, rich, a successfully published writer...)

if I can just figure out this puzzle then POOF, problems solved.

Up at midnight last night, I finally yielded with a good, old-fashioned weep on the phone with Michael. Michael is presently working in Los Angeles and far away from our little family. This is a whole other story of work and marriage and how more families are having to figure things out creatively. 

This is not the standard text-book way. 

But it's a way, until WAY opens to something else.

The yield came in picking up the phone and crying to my husband that I am tired of being strong. That my unyielding is making my body feel squeezed. That somehow, if I could muscle up, I'd save my kid from this cancer experience, and the other one from middle-school hell, or fill in the blanks of Dad's memory, or find work I love that pays/ But this pushing the boulder up the mountain practice is futile. You will get crushed. Better to yield, better to step aside and watch the boulder of 

troubles
worries 
fantasies of controlling outcomes

tumble and fall.


Not easy if you are a fighter, a muscle-er. 

Try it anyway.

Peace comes in the yielding.

xo b